Business Strategy
Unit code: HBS580
| Credit points | 12.5 Credit Points |
| Duration | One teaching period |
| Contact hours | 36 hours |
| Campus | Hawthorn |
| Prerequisites |
Related course(s)
A core unit in the following coures:
Aims and objectives
This unit provides students with skills and practice of strategic management and critical thinking techniques in turbulent environments. In addition, the subject develops skills in using strategic and foresight tools and critical evaluation of strategic alternatives in the context of small to medium enterprises involved in single industry, as well as strategic business units of large corporations. Its main focus is not only the generation of viable strategic alternatives to gain competitive advantage but also developing a viable implementation plan.
On completion of this unit, students should be able to:
- unravel the complexity of a business problem
- employ foresight to challenge and refresh strategic thinking
- develop actions that are as robust as possible against future uncertainties
- design (or redesign an organisation to implement those strategic actions
- assess how that organisation can be brought into being or if already in existence, how it can be developed for the future
- produce a workable action plan based on an informed and a well thought out set of strategies
Teaching methods
Case studies, experiential exercises, lecture/ discussion and a team-based strategy project.
Assessment
Class engagement and contribution (5% - 10%)
Individual assignment (15% - 25%)
Individual assignment (25% - 35%)
Group presentation (20% - 30%)
Group report (15% - 25%)
Individual assignment (15% - 25%)
Individual assignment (25% - 35%)
Group presentation (20% - 30%)
Group report (15% - 25%)
Generic skills outcomes
- Leadership: Interdependence; Engaging with Ambiguity and Paradox; Effective Action and Influence
- Global Focus: Transportable Management Skills
- Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Enterprise creation and/or Development; Practising the Art of Creative Destruction, and Strategic Foresight
- Life-Long Learning: Reflective Inquiry; Hearing and Learning from Direct Feedback; Insight into Personal Blocks to Learning; Capacity to Source and Evaluate Information and Conceptual Frameworks; Team-based Learning
Content
- Overview of Strategic Management – past, present and future trends
- The future of strategy and relevance of non-linear reality in entrepreneurship, innovation, and its implication on competitive advantage – external environment analysis
- Creative destruction versus new business creation – identification and evaluation of business opportunity
- Evaluating and managing the internal environment
- Sorting the Strategy Tool Box
- Developing strategic alternatives and selection of viable strategy
- Implementing the strategy – allocation of requisite resources
- Strategy review, evaluation and control
